Linda M. Walker


Life like

Rain falls from the south sky onto the black peat soil
He nails a big old canvas to the wall and paints opalescent pearls
On the horizon a child appears then disappears then appears again
She sees stars spin in her head and sits down in her red lace dress
My poet friend with long blond hair and blue eyes has gone forever 



Strange

Ants wearing a track across the 
                              concrete path carry tiny yellow grains
                              Sharp distant voices and the cicadas 
in the trees make a whirling atmosphere 
Grey dust on the floor has a soft 
                              sheen like a winter dawn
                              Light streaming through the glass door 
is clouded by a swarm of honeybees  



Stay calm

A small white wooden house sits on the top of a mountain
It glows in the pale sun away from everything and everyone
Sometimes there is perfume and sometimes cigarette smoke 
At night there are footsteps and chairs scraping and doors closing



1961

Francisco’s thirty-two years 
               are a long invisible line 
On his line gather the
               invisible lines of others
The gunshot that killed him rings faintly 
               in their memories of grassy plains
Perecio En Acidente is written 
               on his gravestone



That wait

A foreign policy at play, a
reprieve, because I’m not
making a racket or ringing
the bell, don’t take my word
for it though, press the red 
button, turn on the red light,
and wait, bring your soup and
your knitting – look at Goya’s
little dog, poor sweet thing
alone against that darkness,
it’s unbelievable, that hope,
that patience, to rise each day
and start afresh, calmly, 
a creature, and separate(d)

Linda M. Walker is a writer, artist, and independent curator. She used to live in Adelaide, now she lives in Mount Gambier. Trainwreck Press has published a chapbook of her poems, Thresholds.

 
 

previous page     contents     next page